


Contradictions

by Laurie



Category: Preacher (Comics), Preacher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Angst, M/M, Pining, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-16 07:52:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7258939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurie/pseuds/Laurie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassidy never did learn to deal with contradictions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched Preacher and i spent the day coming up with a story for those two brilliant characters. Also my love for Joe Gilgun goes way way back to years ago, so emergence of this new obsession does not even surprise me. Anyway, here are some words that, together, make up something resembling a story but, unfortunately, without something resembling a plot. I started this at 3 am, and finished at 5 am, and this bugger got so big I had to post it in parts. There will be two or three parts to this, for those who are interested if there are such persons. Also this is the first thing I wrote in years, seriously... SHUTTING UP NOW

The church sticks out across acres and acres of dead brown grass, all dried up under the heat of indifferent sun. It stands, ungainly and colourless, like an old rusty nail forgotten amongst the many pieces of rotten wood that would never get used to build anything. Cassidy remembers early Sundays, knees getting hit on the benches ahead, a clutch of emerald grass visible from the tiny filthy window, and sympathizes. He leans on the muddy grey wall, careful to avoid the merciless sun, and sniffs the air of despair, uselessness and misery that surrounds the little ugly church. Cassidy sympathizes with that, too. 

He fingers at the label on the beer can in his hand, wet and sleek from condensation. Looking around he can spot nothing, not a single bloody thing besides that infinite stretching burnt grass, and he swears. He’s never wanted to leave somewhere more than this miserable hell-hole of a town, but he also wants nothing more than to stay right here. 

Cassidy has always had a problem with being full of contradictions. 

He sits down in an old filthy armchair on the front porch of the church and waits. He sips his beer, watching a fly circle around the can, and he waves it away lazily.

He hears a faint noise of a car approaching, and immediately his senses are on fire. He sits straight, listening to the way the wheels screech on the sand, his heart beating twice as fast as than a minute ago. He knows exactly who is driving this car, and he wants to relax with the knowledge but it makes him tenser instead. 

He watches the car approach and stop, and sees a black haired man step out of the driver’s seat. Cassidy sets his forgotten beer can on the floor, and gets up, his limbs suddenly awkward and too long. 

“Padre,” he says, his voice hoarse, which he blames on the cold beer he’s been drinking, “what's the craig? Save any lost souls today, mate, eh?”

“Cass,” Jesse acknowledges him with a small nod. He eyes Cassidy with a heavy piercing stare, and there’s a tiny smile tugging on his lips at the same time. Cassidy swallows. Sometimes he wants to take Jesse and pick him apart to study him, and his processes, and analyse everything that’s going on inside that messy-haired head. 

Cassidy could never deal well with contradictions. 

“You hungry?” He asks Jesse, wiggling his eyebrows and aiming for nonchalance. “There’s dinner getting cold!” He picks up a bottle of whiskey he’d put in the shadows and waves it around suggestively. “Or should I say warm? You can’t ever keep anything cold in this fucking shite weather, now, can ya?”

Jesse sighs wearily as he walks past Cassidy and disappears behind the doors of the Church. Cassidy just stands there a moment, trying to behave his wayward hands, before following the preacher inside. 

If they drink enough, there’s a chance Cassidy wouldn’t remember how depressing this town is. 

How depressing his excuse for life is.  
+  
+  
They sit in the darkness of the church on a clear Tuesday, the smoke from their cigarettes slowly swirling up to the invisible ceiling. Cassidy imagines he could see the clear starry sky through the clouds of smoke and despair, binding them closer together in this stuffy room. He reckons the Jesus on the crucifixion is looking down on them disapprovingly so he puffs out more smoke to cloud that vision as well. 

“He is there, and he is here, Cass,” Jesse is saying, and Cassidy turns his attention back to him. “He is everywhere.”

Cassidy sighs heavily. “I ain’t saying He’s not, my Padre, it’s just that he’s not giving a fuck about ol’ me or you,” he says in the moment of truthfulness. 

Jesse stares at him silently with eyes darker than the sky outside. Cassidy breaks the contact and looks away.

“Cassidy,” sharp, like a bullet chambered. Cassidy looks back up at him. “Are you saying you believe in Him?” 

And he does, indeed, he believes. He was raised a Catholic and he remained so, stupidly and irrationally, long after he had fangs coming out of his mouth. It’s just that after more than a century on this filthy fucked-up planet, somewhere along the line he’s lost all hope that He would piss on Cassidy if he were on fire. 

“I believe that if there is something above, Padre,” he says finally, looking up at where the ceiling must be, “it’s even more evil than something that might be below.”

He swallows past a sudden lump in his throat. He is fucking pathetic. He looks back at Jesse, whose cigarette has a long column of ash on its end, forgotten between his fingers.

“You are full of contradictions, Cass,” Jesse says, shaking his head. “Do you know that?”

Indeed, Cassidy knows.  
+  
+  
Cassidy slumps at the furthest bench away from the altar, boots kicked out on the beck of the bench in front of him, basking in the scandalized looks people around him keep sending his way. He doesn’t mind them at all as his focus is solely on the preacher walking in front of them all, talking and talking and talking about God and all the king’s men. The sunshine coming from the half broken window above Jesse’s head keeps catching the side of his face: his cheekbone, his eyelashes, his eyebrows. When it catches his hair, Cassidy smiles crookedly, as the sunbeams give Jesse the impression of a halo like a true holy martyr. 

This power in Jesse, this dark air coming off him sometimes clashes so impossibly with this sun kissed, kind and boring man in front of him, that Cassidy wants to dissect Jesse to get his answers on how someone like Jesse could exist. The impossible struggle Jesse leads with a part of himself, the fight that keeps eating at him, bits and pieces every day, Cassidy wants to know it all, to dive deep inside and wander the darkest corners of Jesse’s soul.

Jesse catches Cassidy’s eye and smiles the tiniest of smiles, the kind that is private and intimate even amongst the biggest audience. 

Cassidy shivers. Then he winks with his whole face and smirks smugly. Where no one can see behind the benches, he sits on his hands so they would stop shaking.  
+  
+  
They drink and they laugh and they drink some more. In the dusk of the rising sun, Jesse’s face looks especially surreal. Cassidy moves further on the bench so the upcoming sunbeams wouldn’t touch him and stares at the man in front of him. The shades of pastel pink and yellow brighten Jesse’s face and Cassidy looks, transfixed, at the long dark lashes, at the dark eyes reflecting the early morning sky. 

“All right, Cass?” Jesse whispers, oddly quiet, as if not to disturb this fragile colourful moment, and looks at Cassidy with that tiny smile on his face.

“All right, me Father,” Cassidy whispers back, equally quiet, as the sunbeams claim more and more of Jesse’s face.

Jesse looks at him with an odd expression, something dark in his eyes despite the reflection of the light blue sky in them. There’s a feeling that reminds Cassidy of the smell of freshly-mowed grass, and ancient pubs in the tiny little towns and the secret burning touches behind the back entrance. 

He jumps to his feet, sharply, suddenly angry at Jesse and even more at himself. He shoves that feeling well far into the corner of his mind to deal with it later, or never. It tugs at him, though, calling to be examined, itching and itching and itching.  
Cassidy never did have an itch he didn't scratch. Never let a niggling thought stay in the back of his mind, always pulled them to the forefront to the light of day. He never did leave well enough alone.

Except for this one. 

“While you continue to live your boring uneventful life, Padre, I’m gonna go get me some sleep,” He says loudly, breaking the moment. Jesse looks lost and confused. “Gotta be well slept so you could bask in the shine of me beautiful person tomorrow, lad.”

He moves to leave, but his limbs refuse to cooperate. He is standing frozen in between the wooden benches, torn in all directions at once, experiencing a moment of pure contradiction. He wants to run and hide to never lay eyes on Jesse again, and he wants to reach out and touch him to feel the texture and warmness of Jesse’s skin on his cold fingers. He feels so disoriented his hand moves on its own accord towards Jesse’s face, and he snaps it back, fist curling tight, and puts his hands in his pockets. His muscles spasm and he can feel tremor going up his arms and shoulders from the tips of his fingers.

He curses inwardly, and a moment later, his legs can move again, so he flees back to the attic stumbling into the doorframe, clumsy in his hurry to hide. 

In the messy nest of blankets and pillows he considers his bed, he breathes deeply, calming himself down. He doesn’t want that, doesn’t wish to ever feel like that, and he bites hard on his lip, repeating it in his mind like a mantra. There’s an itch deep inside that he can’t scratch, and he hits the wall hard with his fist trying to focus on the pain. 

It doesn’t help, and Cassidy lies there for hours trying to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these parts turned out very uneven, as i'm really bad at math and at posting at 5 am. I shall not do that again. There will be one more part to this, which will bear the 'Explicit' rating of this story.  
> Enjoy.

The heroin bubbles quietly before going down his vein and disappears like magic dust, leaving behind a useless empty syringe and taste of bitterness in Cassidy’s mouth. His heart aches; he must have taken too much. The walls of the tiny attic, cold and colourless like the rest of the church, look down at him silently and mockingly, pressing down on his very existence. He wonders where Jesse is.

There’s a pressing dismal sensation in his chest, almost painful in its intensity, so he gets up and walks up to the tiny dirty window.

Outside, he sees Hell. The burning in his chest presses and turns into searing pain that tears at him, eats at him. Cassidy looks on and on at the Hell outside the little window, until it crawls up to him and swallows him up. There’s nothing and nothing around him, no one to hear his calls and he wants to laugh at the cruel irony of it. The crushing loneliness comes down on his like a sledgehammer and he finds he has no mouth to scream; he has no hands to scratch the itch.

Cassidy, says God, and he knows that this is the end. He can’t ever come back from this, no amount of blood can ever fix this. There’s nothing he could ever do to remedy for the amount of wasted love and lives in his pathetic parody of life, and if there ever was a chance for him – if there ever was a million chances – he’s thrown away them all.

Cassidy, booms the voice of God, as Cassidy’s existence dissipates into nothingness. This is how I go, he thinks, as his voice and his vision slip out from him, this is how it finally happens. He is going to cease to exist as if he never was in the first place.

Cassidy, the voice screams from everywhere at once, and suddenly Cassidy is lying on the floor, his hands clutching and tearing at his bare chest, Jesse’s arms around him. He tries to remember how to breathe again – in and out – while Jesse’s warm hands smooth circles down his spine. He exhales a long shaken breath; he’s never had such a bad trip before.

Hell slowly disappears from around him, leaving only colourless ugly walls behind. Cassidy reckons they hardly feel any better.

With a tentative fearful hand, Jesse touches Cassidy’s chin and lifts it making him look Jesse in the eye. Cassidy does, tremors and spasms going through his ancient body.

“You fucking idiot,” says Jesse, his own voice as shaky as Cassidy feels. “You complete fucking idiot,” he repeats with more force, as if Cassidy might not have heard him the first time. “Heroin, Cassidy? Really? Fucking look at you! What have you done?”

Yeah, look at him. The only reliable constant in his life for decades and decades seems to no longer be an option. He wonders if it’s possible for him to overdose, at least for a short time before his heart restarts. He’s never wanted to find out and now he does.

There’s a burning in his chest that doesn’t go away. He looks down at his chest to find blood dripping down his sternum, his stomach – thin crimson trail down his pajama bottoms. There’s red on his hands, under his fingernails, as Cassidy realises he’s scratched his chest to a bloody wound. He’s going to need someone else’s blood now.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Cassidy,” Jesse says for the third time, this time quiet and resigned, his eyes sad, like he is disappointed and, strangely, this time it sounds the worst. Cassidy plasters a toothy grin on his face, as if nothing’s wrong – and nothing really is wrong – but the corners of Jesse’s mouth stay down. He looks almost comical with his a little exaggerated expression of sorrow, and Cassidy would laugh if he didn’t want to cry so much.

“Nothing but the greenest grass for me for the next week, Padre, I promise,” Cassidy says, grinning maybe a bit too madly at the preacher. “You’re welcome to join me the next time, mate, what if you wan’ ta babysit an’ all that.”

Jesse says nothing, but his shoulders are drooped and the line of his jaw is tense. Cassidy wonders when he started to differentiate between the amount of tenseness in the lines of Jesse’s face. Now that is one skill he absolutely does not need. His hand flies in to scratch at his chest. Stop that. He puts his bloodied hand on his knee instead. Jesse looks down at him with so much worry it almost hurts.

“Padre, come off it now,” Cassidy says trying for a peace offering. “There aren’t enough controlled substances on this God’s green earth to make this brilliant Irish heart stop.” He points at his chest helpfully as Jesse eyes him darkly. Cassidy eyes him right back. Attack is the best defence. “Could it be that our almighty powerful preacher cares too much about little ol’ me to sleep soundly at night? Does your constant worry about me bloody fantastic person make you toss and turn? Does it -”

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Jesse cuts him off with a note of finality as he gets to his feet, looming over Cassidy in the dusky smelly room.

“I reckon I might’ve heard that somewhere,” Cassidy says, annoyed, looking away from Jesse down to his hands and belatedly realizes there’s still a syringe there, sticking out of his arm. His pride stinging, he leaves it there for the world to see. If he stares at it long enough, it almost looks like an extension of his arm, like a cancerous tumour that is unnatural but has been there enough time to feel a part of you.

“You want to overdose on shit drugs – be my guest, Cassidy,” Jesse says coldly, like a bucket of icy water in the middle of a heated summer day. “Just don’t do it on my premises.”

Jesse leaves, slamming the door loudly and raising up a cloud of dust, his hard footsteps following down the hollow sound. Cassidy stares after him long after he’s gone, long after it gets dark outside. He stares at the closed door, almost without blinking, until his eyes hurt. He tries his best to will his eyes to remain open – there’s still too much Hell burn to the inside of his eyelids.

He sits on the floor until so late that it’s become early, and then he lies down to his messy improvised bed. He stares at the grey wall for hours, never blinking.

+

+

Cassidy isn’t cold, and he isn’t detached. He has been in love before. One doesn’t live on this planet for twelve decades without loving someone once.

There was a girl whose face he does not remember anymore, only long red curls and the ivory, almost white shade of her skin, which made him feel unworthy to touch her with his always-filthy working class hands. There was a boy after that, secret hidden touches under the pub table, rush of adrenaline to his head, dizziness and happiness mixed together, something oddly liberating in biting the forbidden apple. Cassidy fucked up both of those tender fragile things he had with two of those people, both of whom were purer and better than he could ever hope to be, so he came to a conclusion that he only deserved someone of his kind.

He was a barely in his twenties then, far more foolish and naïve than he is now, and he still didn’t learn, once and for all, that nothing good in his life ever lasts. There was a woman after he was bitten, soft skin and sharp wit, cruel and deadly, and she had him wrapped around her finger like a tight-fitting ring. Cassidy wanted her and wanted her, but she never seemed to care if the ground opened and swallowed him whole. She didn’t last at all after she’d found out what he was, and Cassidy left Dublin the day she left him, and never returned. Cassidy was not an idiot, he learnt from his mistakes, if nothing else.

But about twenty-five years ago now, a lad crossed his countless walk along the path of redemption, ginger and freckled, reminding Cassidy of a tiny country he once lived in a long long time ago. He was funny and boring in his normality, but Cassidy yearned for boring, as he was tired, so very tired. Staying somewhere for more than a month usually ended pretty inconveniently for him and rather painfully for whoever hunted him down. Tom let him stay with him, and he was sweet to Cassidy, and after a while Cassidy thought, fer fuck’s sake, not again, as he realized one sunny Wednesday that he was very much in love with the boring normal ginger.

He managed to keep his nature a secret for nearly six years, before he fucked up, and Tom found Cassidy with his fangs in the neck of a thief who was unfortunate enough to choose their house to break into. Tom was too normal, too boring, and, of course, he left, running away from Cassidy like his arse was on fire. So Cassidy was on his lonesome once again, like it was supposed to be, like he was destined to be.

The moments of his life in between those four people never stood out with anything interesting to him. There were long strings of lovers and casual sex, and rough sex when Cassidy needed to punish himself, and weak attempts at redemption after. Of course there were alcohol and drugs, all kinds of them – Cassidy knows them all now – because sometimes Cassidy thinks, this pain is not survivable.

“Boring’s not the worst a person could be, Cass,” Jesse states to him, and Cassidy feels ephemeral flashes of memories, mostly sensations of warm freckled skin under his fingers, the silky sheets caressing his tired body, the flashy sunbeams crawling into the room through soft yellow curtains, making ginger hair seem almost white at the outline.

Cassidy swallows past a cotton ball in his throat. Sometimes, so rarely Cassidy doesn't even want to think about it, he wakes up disoriented and confused and he looks to his left where a warm body should be, where soft yellow curtains should be gently swaying from the morning breeze. He wants it back so dearly at those times, all those boring routine things they did Cassidy never expected himself to do, and he blinks tears away from his eyes, the unwanted knowledge of how good it felt to love someone and be loved back squeezes his chest with an iron fist. There’s taste of bile in his mouth as he remembers exactly the moment he fucked up the longest and the best relationship in his life.

Those moments are short and very rare in between, but they hit him hard every time they happen. After, Cassidy drives, walks or crawls to the nearest brothel and pays the rest of his money to get slapped, burnt, beaten, broken, hurt.

This pain is not survivable.

“I think you’re wrong, Padre,” Cassidy says, his teeth biting into his bottom lip so hard, he draws blood. “I think boring is the worst.”

+

+

He is waiting for Jesse inside the damned church, the darkness around him a welcome old friend. He’s having a fag, blowing the smoke out of his mouth in small twisted circles. Jesse likes it when he blows circles. Cassidy has a bit more time left to practice before Jesse is going to join him.

He hears the car outside, signalling the return of the preacher, and he has a confusing moment when he thinks, panicked, if he looks good. He brushes his hair with his hand somewhere to the side of his head, before he realizes he is ridiculous and pathetic, and stops. He is a century-old bloody vampire, he reminds himself, biting his lips obsessively. Too bad there’s nothing he can show for all these years.

The door opens with a creak, letting Jesse in, a small plastic bag in each of his hands. Cassidy salutes him with a half-burnt cigarette, enjoying the way Jesse’s eyes seem impossibly black. Jesse silently walks up to him, tiny smile on his lips that makes Cassidy’s insides burn and black eyes focused solely on him. He gives Cassidy a plastic bag.

Inside is a carton of Chinese food. Cassidy’s heart skips a bit; he doesn’t know what he expected.

“I think you mentioned you loved Chinese,” Jesse says with a smile, looking down at him like Cassidy’s something precious.

“I didn’t think you’d remember,” Cassidy grins. “You had quite a fallout that night, Padre.”

“Well, contrary to what you think, I do pay attention to what you say, Cass,” Jesse smirks and takes out his own carton of food. Inside it lays a burger and fries.

“I didn’t reckon they even had Chinese in this fucking hole of a town,” Cassidy mumbles through mouthful of Chinese. Surprisingly it doesn’t suck.

Jesse’s lips tighten. “I admit it’s not perfect, but I like it here. And I like the people here.”

Cassidy squints up at him through the darkness.

“I didn’t know they had it, either,” Jesse continues, relaxing. He chews on his fries thoughtfully. “Had to drive around a bit out of town, but I found it at the end.”

Cassidy keeps silent, the food suddenly stuck in his throat. He doesn’t know what to make of this confession, that Jesse went through extra trouble just to get hi a bloody carton of food he once mentioned he enjoyed. His tired ruined heart beats faster with the strongest catalyst of Jesse’s warm eyes on him.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Cassidy says drily, breaking the eye contact. He’s such a coward. He zeroes in on his hand, scratching at the space where his neck meets his shoulder. Stop that. “You like the people here? No, you fucking don’t, Padre, I’ve seen that bus driver nonce with half of his bloody face fucked up after you paid him a visit! Or is that how you express your affection, man? Should I start wearing protection?”

“I didn’t claim I love all of them, _that_ would be a lie,” Jesse replies, his eyes shining through the darkness with barely concealed excitement. Cassidy reckons Jesse truly enjoys this: the night-long conversations, heated arguments, challenging opponent.

“Love thy neighbour,” Cassidy quotes, stubbornly wishing to find a way to strike Jesse, to make _him_ the vulnerable one here, to wipe that knowing smile from Jesse’s face as though he knows something Cassidy doesn’t. He crosses his arms protectively over his chest. “Thou shall not judge and crack the bones of another man.”

Jesse doesn’t say anything, squinting at Cassidy through thick cigarette smoke, filling the small church. “And what about you, then?” He asks quietly. “Do you love thy neighbour, Cassidy?”

The question is simple and expected enough, but there’s something in Jesse’s tone that suggests Cassidy should think thoroughly about his answer. He can’t see Jesse clearly, even with his vampiric eyes, but he thinks Jesse is very tense under his nonchalant demeanour. Cassidy wants to get up, walk straight to him and kiss Jesse, but that’s not something he would or could do, so he doesn’t, and he sits in his place like a statue instead, hands clutching his shoulders tightly.

“I’m a vampire, remember?” He says instead of owning up and giving Jesse a response to the question he asked. “I’m already dead, Padre, your rules don’t really apply to me.” He grins sharply and toothily, imagining he must look like a shark at that moment, wild and dangerous.

Jesse doesn’t look intimidated though, or impressed in any way. He stands up and crosses the space between them in one step, and touches Cassidy’s chin lightly, lifting it up. It’s like that moment after his near overdose, except it isn’t, it’s different in its nature, and the consequences of this action. Cassidy swallows and swallows nervously, and chews his lips as he look at Jesse’s dark, powerful eyes. His heart hammers in his chest violently with both anticipation and nervous fright, as he knows something is going to happen now.

And then Jesse leans down, his fingers still holding Cassidy’s chin, and kisses him on the lips. It’s light, not pushy and a little wet, and Cassidy thinks it lasts both a second and an eternity. His heart stops and skips several beats, before restarting with triple speed, and his shaking hands clutch Jesse’s shirt tightly. By the time he really opens his mouth to let Jesse in, the preacher straightens and steps back, Cassidy almost falling in front of him, his hands still in death grip in Jesse’s shirt.

He thinks he can’t breathe, or the planet must have suddenly run out of oxygen. He stares up at Jesse stupidly, licking his lips and panting as if he’s just completed a marathon, and his whole body just _aches._ He tries to calm down, but his poor sodding heart keeps beating right in his ears, and suddenly he feels young and more alive than ever.

“I think,” Jesse says finally, his voice awfully loud in the silent room. “I think you’re just really very lonely, Cassidy.”

He turns and walks out of the church, and Cassidy hears his car start and leave, the tires screeching on the dry dirty sand. He sits there in the dark, his fingers ghosting over his lips, and wants to leave Annville immediate and to follow after Jesse wherever he’s going.

He sits there till morning, but Jesse never comes in for a sermon, so it’s just him, sitting there alone.

Just as it should be, Cassidy thinks.


	3. Chapter 3

On a cloudy Thursday, Cassidy takes a tentative step outside in the middle of the day. He doesn’t know the exact science behind all the vampiric rules, but he doesn’t burn without the direct sunbeams touching his skin. He’s not wearing any protection like a poncho or a bleeding sombrero, but his shades are in place, making the world seem an even darker place.

He needs to go explore in order to find him some drugs. Jesse sure isn’t going to help that mission.

He bites his lower lip, already messy and bloody, never enough time for it to heal properly as he constantly worries it. If he’s honest with himself, he has been avoiding Jesse for the last couple of days.

Jesse, on the other hand, seems perfectly, inexplicably fine, like the thing that happened the other day in the church did not affect him or fuck with his head in the slightest. It is very unfair, Cassidy is sure, that he is the only one of the pair tossing and turning, angry and desperate to get the taste of Jesse’s lips out of his mouth.

There’s an annoying fly circling around him again and again. He catches it with a speed unnatural for a human man and takes a sadistic pleasure in squashing it, until it’s dead as a doornail.

He looks around at the endless burnt-out prairie. That moment with a fly a second ago was the most emotionally exciting thing to happen to him today. Fucking Texas, he thinks, spitting, fucking _Annville_.

This is what Hell must be like, he thinks and his hand flies up to scratch at the itch somewhere under his skin.

_No, you’ve seen what Hell is like._

He shakes his head getting rid of these useless thoughts. He fishes out the keys to the truck he’d stolen earlier from that Emily person, and he gets into the driver’s seat quickly.

Right-sided traffic, he reminds himself, turning the key in the ignition. He doesn’t need another accident.

For the first hour Cassidy just drives around aimlessly, because he’s always loved driving, enjoyed the way the wind crept in through the barely open window to blow at his face and ruffle his hair; the way the music from the radio filled the small space, the relative privacy of a car.

He stops to stretch his legs at one of those countless identical plazas with a dozen of cheap tiny shops and shit nail salons, full of non-English speaking women over forty. There’s a rusty shop in there selling alcohol and Cassidy briefly considers the amount of cash he’d also stole – borrowed – from Emily, tries to decide if that’s going to be enough for the cheapest shittiest stuff they have.

The sky is completely devoid of colour, heavy clouds hanging so low above the ground Cassidy reckons he could touch them if he stands really tall. They paint the town moody and serious, which isn’t a good look on Annville, not that there actually exists a good look on it, mind you. Streets absolutely empty and silent, Cassidy imagines he’s the only one left here, the only unnatural thing to survive ice and fire and remain on the planet long after it’s gotten rid of everyone else. It’s not a pleasant thought and it reminds him too much of an old nightmare he’s seen enough times to memorize the feel of, where everybody is just gone, and he’s still there, and will be there forever until he goes completely mad or burns under the heat of the sun, whichever comes first. The feel of it is still fresh enough, what right after his little heroin trip gone wrong, and Cassidy forces his wayward hand to stop scratching at his collarbone.

He really needs that cheap shite they call whiskey in this country, and he reaches inside his pocket to fetch the rumbled folded up balls of bank notes. In his task of unfolding and counting the money, he misses a dark-haired man stepping out of the shop and spotting him.

“Cass!” A painfully familiar voice calls that makes Cassidy’s teeth ache. Jesse is making his way to Cassidy, his step confident and relaxed. Cassidy wants to punch the bleeding wanker for fucking him up so hard and managing to look so unbothered himself. For a moment he contemplates just jumping back in the car and driving away without a word, but Jesse is already within reach of him, so he tries for a sharp grin but has a sneaking suspicion it looks more like a grimace.

“Hey Cass,” Jesse says, smiling at him. He has something behind his back, and upon closer look, Cassidy sees an unsurprisingly bottle-shaped object in a paper bag.

“Holy Father,” Cassidy greets him, still working on his expression. The weird smile seems to be frozen on his face. “What’s that you’ve got there, Padre?” He points to the paper bag, “Hm? A little something you didn’t want to share? Or have you got yourself a new Irish friend to hit the bottle with?”

Inexplicably, Jesse looks very guilty at that, as if there was, indeed, a new friend ready to jump from behind the corner, yelling ‘ _Surprise!’_

“Just usual, Cass, been drinking on my own lately,” Jesse says, looking at him attentively. Cassidy fidgets under such scrutiny. “Where’ve you been lately, anyway? Haven’t been seeing much of you for the past couple of days,” Jesse says thoughtfully.

“Oh, the usual,” he says vindictively, copying Jesse’s own words. Distractedly he realizes he’s acting like a stupid cow in those chick flick movies, where she finds out her boyfriend had cheated on her. He doesn’t want to be Jesse’s girlfriend in this scenario. “Drinking, sleeping, shitting, getting high, getting pissed – rinse and repeat.”

Jesse stares at him with wide apologetic eyes. Caught in them, Cassidy believes Jesse in the most wonderful thing he’s seen in his fucking long life. Immediately, the thought stuck in his head, he feels idiotic, scared to meet Jesse’s pushy gaze with so much emotion in it, Cassidy doesn’t know what to do with it.

“I missed you, Cass,” Jesse admits quietly, sad eyes boring into Cassidy’s. “Sinning is not nearly as much fun without you.”

Fuck, Cassidy thinks, what a bloody pile of fucking wank. Not again, please, he thinks, _begs_ silently to any saints who can hear him if they are listening. The four people in Cassidy’s life, the people who divide his life into distinctive parts of four ‘befores and afters’, they each took a piece of Cassidy with them as they went. A piece here and there, there was less and less of Cassidy every time, and now a huge chunk of him has been missing for so long he sometimes forgets it ever existed. But Jesse is looking at him like he is something to be cherished and worshipped, and Cassidy knows that this will be the end of him, that the next bit of him someone cuts away will be the last.

This pain is not survivable.

“You aren’t nearly as much fun without me, period,” Cassidy says, and Jesse rolls his eyes.

“Gonna join me tonight, then?” Jesse asks him. “Contribute some of that old Irish charm you keep claiming you possess…”

“Darling, I am the definition of ‘old Irish charm, my dear naïve Padre,” Cassidy says, the endearment slipping out without him having any control over it. It feels bloody _good_ , like his relationship with Jesse surpassed the first stages of awkwardness and exploring, and went straight to _fucking comfortable_ with each other. “You know nothing yet, love, but fear not! I shall teach you the subtle art of exorcising the boring twat from inside you with the holy tools of alcohol and prayer.”

Jesse throws his head back and laughs at that, and unable to look anywhere else, Cassidy stares at the strong column of his neck, at the sharp movements of his Adam’s apple. He wants to trace it with his tongue and bite and kiss it, but he stays in his place, merely watching. He itches and aches everywhere on his body at once, the tips of his fingers burning to reach out and just touch Jesse, feel the warmth of him.

“Come on, then,” Jesse calls out, the laughter still deepening his voice. “I’m up for a bit of exorcism tonight.”

+

+

On a rainy Friday night, Jesse swallows too much alcohol in sips that are too large, with almost zero time in between them. He is falling asleep on his feet, his eyes too weak to remain open, and as Cassidy puts Jesse’s arm around his neck to drag him upstairs to the attic, Jesse’s breath reeks of shite alcohol. They’ve been drinking vodka tonight, as they’d run out of whiskey and wine and anything else decent, so there’s no surprise the holy man, slumped against him, couldn’t handle his liquor. Cassidy hates vodka – he’s been to Russia, where that shit is the deadliest, several times, in those few but desperate moments he needed to punish himself, and there’s no better place for that than the country of people specialising in masochism. On the bright side though, in over a century on this planet, Cassidy now has the strongest liver and the untmost immunity to alcohol. A hundred years of drinking will build tolerance in anyone, but required Cassidy to get better and subtler at acting drunk. Sometimes, when he tries hard enough, he can believe it himself, feeling the rush of blood to his head, the happy confused dizziness, and he can relax.

Jesse doesn’t look relaxed at all, though, and Cassidy sympathizes. He remembers the hangovers, too – the worst ones when he felt like curling in on himself and just _dying_ – and he does not envy tomorrow morning’s Jesse, he thinks as he drags his friend up the winding church stairs. He feels a little lightheaded from the proximity of Jesse, from heat radiating off him and seeping under Cassidy’s cold skin, from the smell of vodka and something undeniably _Jesse_ touching his nose. At some point, Jesse’s head rolls until his nose and lips brush against Cassidy’s pulse point, making his blood boil and the jeans he’d borrowed from the ‘for the poor’ box too tight against his crotch.

The walk to the attic seems to be lasting an eternity and Cassidy groans, relieved, when they finally reach the mess of bed sheets and blankets the vampire sleeps at, and he pushes Jesse down on them. The preacher falls like a sack of potatoes, and Cassidy stands there, surveying him, checking that Jesse’s comfortable and warm before leaving him alone. He throws a blanket over Jesse’s body, and Jesse sighs in his sleep happily, the tiniest warmest smile appearing on his face.

“Cass,” he breathes out, turning on the spot. His face relaxed without the pressure of reality pushing down on him, he looks younger and more careless, but also happier. It’s all Cassidy can do not to snuggle up to him and fall asleep in Jesse’s arms, so he swears instead, contemplating if he deserves to have wank to relieve the pressure on his cock. He decides even he’s not up for such blasphemy as to wank to the fantasy of a holy father while being inside a holy church, and that’s the reason he’s not doing it, not at all that Jesse might rise from the oblivion of alcohol induced coma at catch him at the act.

Instead, he adjusts his jeans and swaggers outside, breathing in relatively fresh night air and doing his best to ignore his poor weeping throbbing cock.

That’s when he sees them, those bleeding cunts with a sodding chainsaw and he freezes. He’s killed them again and again now, and he thought he’d made it clear that trying to open his friend up like a can of Campbell’s via chainsaw was the furthest from what could be called a good idea. Nevertheless, here they are, creeping in quietly and carefully, chainsaw ready, and Cassidy is _furious_.

“Oi! You idiotic fucking twats!” He calls to them and they both freeze rather comically. Cassidy would laugh if he weren’t so murderous at the moment. “I thought I told you two stupid cunts that this here -” he points to the chainsaw in the arms of the taller one, “will make you regret the day you were born – or fucking _reborn_ , the hell if I know with you two buggering government clones – as I am not above mutilating your corpses just for the fun of it.”

The smallest twat stares at him with his mouth agape. The chainsaw trembles slightly in his hands.

“And I thought you didn’t murder people, Cassidy,” He says in his weird creepy accent that makes Cassidy want to punch his gobshite face. He thinks back to when he might’ve told the bastards his name, but doesn’t recall it. He’ll think about that later.

“Not If I can help it. But you two fuckers seem to weirdly enjoy coming to the same place and getting creatively murdered. Let’s not move away from the tradition!”

“We need to get that thing back where it belongs,” Says the lanky one urgently, as if his confidential tone will make Cassidy want to kill him less. This one’s accent is not much better, and he cringes. “You have no idea what it is capable of!”

“Oh it’s capable alright, innit?” Cassidy says nodding. “Doesn’t make it alright for you to crawl in here in the middle of the night like two creeps that you are and raise that unsophisticated piece of metal over that man in there,” he finishes, pointing to the little attic window.

“You don’t understand!” Insists that little one, his bald head reflecting the moonlight. “It is deadly, that power, it can do things dare not imagine!”

“I dare to imagine you forgot that between the three of us here, _I_ certainly am the deadly one,” Cassidy says, getting fed up. He can hear both of their heartbeats clearer than ever, and he realizes how long it’s been since he’s fed. “I mean I don’t wanna brag but I have killed you twice now, haven’t I? Wouldn’t reckon twice wasn’t enough for you, if you two idjits decided to show up here again, after I told you to bugger off. But then, three is the holy number, so let’s have it then.”

They show no signs of intending to go away and leave Cassidy and Jesse the fuck alone. The lanky one opens his mouth to say something, but Cassidy’s had enough.

In one lightning-fast move he surges at Lanky and tears at his throat with his teeth. He doesn’t really have fangs to his immense sorrow, as fangs are the only thing he is envious of when seeing those shite vampire films. He expects he would look so badass with them coming out of his mouth. But being as it is, merely his mouth with the 29 natural teeth he had left, he doesn’t even try to not make a bloody mess. He bites and tears until metallic taste of blood fills his mouth and his throat, and there are bits of tissue stuck between his teeth. The mad screams of horror and pain feels like music to his ears as he chugs down the wanker’s blood.

There’s a sharp hit to the back of his head as he remembers Baldy. He smirks, thinking how awfully easy these too are. This time he can’t even blame himself, really, as they’ve all but showed under his nose on a silver platter with bows on their necks. He might not mind them showing up again, for all the delicious blood he gets out of it.

Half a minute later finds Cassidy with his mouth stuck in the little one’s neck. He sucks him dry and thinks, distractedly, that he’s one outfit short again. The clothes he’s wearing will definitely not survive this, _again._

“What --”

There’s a choking sound behind him. Cassidy’s whole body freezes so sharply it's almost painful.

Please, please, please, he repeats silently, in absolute horror, as this moment resembles another one far too closely, the one many nights away that left Cassidy one bit of himself short. Please, he begs whomever will hear him, please don’t let it end. He doesn’t think he will survive the pain of Jesse abandoning him, and he’s so terrified to move, to even turn around and look at Jesse, he stays right where he is, frozen to the spot with his mouth sucking on a dead guy’s artery. He can’t believe this is going to end like this, he can’t believe it’s all over now.

Most importantly, he can’t believe he’s made the same dreadful mistake again, like life hasn’t taught him anything after all. But then, he is the most horrible, lying, cheating cunt to ever walk the earth, so he can’t possibly be surprised now. The pain is what he gets for being a complete god-awful fuck-up, so he should open up and swallow, because this, this pain is _all there ever will be for him._

This pain is not survivable.

“What the fuck is that, Cassidy?” Jesse’s voice speaks abruptly behind him, cold and precise, without a hint of drunkenness. Then again, Cassidy reckons the sight of your best mate sucking on a corpse’s blood would make anyone sober up a tad.

Tentatively and fearfully, he turns around to look at Jesse. He must make quite a sight with bits of bloody flesh sticking to the skin around his mouth, he realizes, and he quickly wipes at it with his sleeve. Slowly, forcing himself to quit being a coward, he meets Jesse’s eyes.

“Now, Padre, I swear to you, these two were going to cut your manly pecks in half to get at the thing inside you, they brought a chainsaw again, I mean, what’s with the sawing anyway – there’re tons of more interesting ways to kill someone, not that I practised any, well, to be honest--”

“Shut up,” Jesse orders, cutting of his pathetic blubbering. Cassidy isn’t sure if it was Jesse telling him to shut up or the thing inside him, but he does anyway, closing his mouth obediently with a snap. Jesse looks down on the scene, still like a statue, look of disbelief mixed together with disappointment, stuck on his face. Cassidy braces himself, as whatever happens next will not be pretty.

“Who were they?” Jesse finally says in the same cold detached voice after what feels like hours of painful dragging silence.

“I told you, man,” Cassidy hurries to explain, his voice a tiny rusty sound, like he hasn’t talked for weeks. “These be some weird government clones, I swear to ya, I mean I’ve killed them twice now – I can show where I’ve buried them as well, but they keep coming back hear with the sodding chainsaw!” He waves madly at the offending tool to make sure Jesse really notices it.

“Why did they come back, then?” Jesse says again, his voice way too calm to be a normal reaction. Cassidy waits for the inevitable storm after the quiet.

“They’re here for you, Padre,” Cassidy says weakly. “I thought they wanted me, goddamned vampire hunters, I thought, but the thing inside ya’s what they’re after.”

Jesse falls silent again, his gaze surveying around the scene before stopping at the torn mutilated neck of Baldy. He looks about ready to vomit. Cassidy _feels_ about ready to vomit, but such unholy act would make him lose all the blood that hasn’t had time to sink in, making this whole stupid fucking thing unworthy it. Making him lose Jesse _for nothing._

Jesse stares at him then, eyes dark, and right at that moment he looks dangerous and wild. As a rule Cassidy does his best to hide and blend in with his surroundings, clothes dim and shades covering half his face to make him as forgettable as he can. He doesn’t need to draw too much attention to himself, especially with a bunch of religious nutters following him like bees after honey. Drawing attention is Jesse’s job between the two of them, being devilishly handsome and charming, and attracting a churchfull of visitors to – Cassidy bets his arse on it – just stare at him, the eye candy that Jesse is. Cassidy is perfectly happy to let Jesse have it, the full attention of everybody present, diverting it away from Cassidy sitting at the furthest corners of the shadows.

Right now though, Cassidy feels the full scope of Jesse’s attention on him, as if looking right through his soul if Cassidy had one, and the hairs on his neck stand with the electricity and tension in the air. He wants to curl into a ball, he wants to run away, and there’s a part of him that wants to _attack_ Jesse, make him hurt for all the suffering Cassidy’s going through.

But there’s a part that wants to stay right there and wait for Jesse’s verdict, even if that’s bound to cause him even more pain. He’s got to take all he can get, so he’s going to take every last moment with Jesse until the preacher kicks him out.

Suddenly, Jesse sighs heavily, his hand flying up to rub at his eyes, and his whole body unfurls, the tension leaving him. He looks impossibly tired, exhausted and crushed under this new unwelcome knowledge.

“How come you’re a vampire, Cassidy?”

Cassidy blinks.

“How am I a vampire? Really?” Jesse shots him a look more burning than the sun. "Well, I got bitten Padre, what did you expect? Don’t you watch films at all? Even at this Bumfuck, Nowhere you must’ve heard of that Twilight movies shit, though I must warn you first and foremost – I don’t sparkle.” It is not, by far, one of his best jokes, but he still snickers nervously.

“So these two… whoever they are- _were_ ,” he points at two dead bodies between them, “are they gonna be vampires, too, now?”

“No, mate, I can’t turn anyone, I’m just simple blood-sucker, drink blood – satisfy the hunger.” He sounds like he’s in a commercial and he giggles weakly at the image.

“Can you turn into a bat?” Jesse asks, and Cassidy shakes his head. “Are you really 119 years old?”

“Still not looking a day over 30, aren’t I” He responds with a toothy fake grin. Jesse does not look amused.

“I can’t believe I let an actual _vampire_ live in a _church_ ,” Jesse says, disbelievingly, shaking his head. “This is such a… a…”

“Mistake?” Cassidy supplies helpfully. Jesse only needs to say a word and he’s gonna be out of here in a split second. Even he is not such a masochist, although he tries.

Jesse looks at him oddly. “I was gonna say _ironic_ ,” he sakes his head. “You are not anyone’s mistake, Cassidy. It’s my damn fault for attracting trouble upon my ass, and then not even believing you when you actually _told me_ you were a vampire.”

Cassidy waits, because this can’t be it, this is not possible, he can’t be let off the hook so easily and uneventfully. The other shoe is bound to drop, soon, so he doesn’t let himself get his hopes up.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, Cass,” Jesse says, and somehow this is about Jesse now, and there is Jesse’s fault in all this in Jesse’s naïve impossible mind. “Thank you for, apparently, saving my life. Twice.”

“What, uh, what should we do with, with this,” He says slowly, as if talking to a retarded person, which Jesse is acting like. He gestures at the bloody mess of two twisted bodies on the ground.

“Well, you made this mess, you fucking clean it, Cass,” Jesse says, raising his eyebrows. “There’s a sermon tomorrow morning, so you better start right fucking now, before the whole town sees what I let you get away with at my church.”

And with a mumbled, barely audible, _I need a drink_ , he disappears inside the little ugly church that, all of a sudden, doesn’t seem so ugly to Cassidy anymore.

“Aren’t you gonna help me with these, you wanker?” Cassidy yells after him. “Thou shalt help thy vampiric friend bury dead bodies when thy fantastic friend only murdered them to save thy ungrateful bloody arse!”

He gets a screamed ‘Shut up’, muffled through the closed church doors in return. He realizes he was crouching on the ground this entire bloody confrontation, and he finally gets up, stretching his old tired body. His joints crack, and his heart still beats madly in his chest and ears, and he’s as close to hyperventilating as a vampire can be. Next time, he feels he’s getting a heart attack if something like this, God forbid, happens ever again.

_‘Before the whole town sees what I let you get away with at my church’_

He thinks back to what Jesse said a minute ago. _Let him get away_. Does that mean Jesse really is as unbothered about him being a fucking abomination as he seemed to be? Does that mean he actually got away, for the first time in his life, with being an undead blood-sucking murdered? Even Jesse can’t be as liberal as that, he thinks, but there’s an unbidden, unwanted hope flickering inside him, too strong to push away. Instead, he savors it, lets himself enjoy it as long as it lasts, because even Jesse _can’t be that mad as to let a vampire live with him._ It’s just a matter of time before he realizes what a creepy creature he is, and then it will be over.

_Jesse won’t do that,_ says an annoying voice in his head, which, even more irritatingly, sounds like Jesse. He snorts.

Even Jesse can’t be that forgiving.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've finally finished this disastrous thing, the final part of which is nearly 10000 words of unapologetic shameless porn. Oh well, I did say my love for Joe Gilgun runs way back, but coupled together with brilliant cast in a great TV series, it just grows into unhealthy proportions.   
> ANYWAY, as always, all comments are greatly appreciated and memorized to the word!   
> Enjoy!

Something shifts between them, something so painfully tender and intangible that Cassidy can’t quite put his finger on it, not yet. To an outsider, they look the same, and they do the same stuff, but it doesn’t feel the same, not after that night where Jesse found out who Cassidy was and simply accepted it.

There are warm but bittersweet looks Jesse keeps sending his way when he thinks Cassidy doesn’t notice; there’re lingering touches, barely there like a breeze from the swipe of a butterfly wing; there are conversations longer and more intimate than what Cassidy is used to, and Jesse getting ever more curious about him every passing minute. It’s fascinating and intoxicating in it’s novelty and its forbiddance, and Cassidy gets drunk on it. Fool that he is, he’s thought that being an addict necessarily requires material substance, but he’s addicted quickly to all those tiny unnoticeable things, and his speeded heartbeat turns into ache, which turns into a pressing need to be around Jesse, to feed off his energy, his voice, his warmth. It’s pretty surreal, but it’s also damn stupid of him.

Cassidy hates and loves every minute of it. He feels lightheaded and swayed like a naïve teenager, daydreaming about Jesse while being a few feet away from him. He feels more alive and more _human_ than he remembers to ever have felt. He enjoys every second he spends next to Jesse, and slowly but surely his daily schedule is built entirely out of events that revolve the preacher’s life, and the moments in between don’t matter, fading into nothingness at the back of his mind – unimportant if Jesse’s not in them.

But Cassidy has never dealt well with contradictions, so at the same time he hates it all for all the same reasons. He’s never wanted to feel this way, not ever, so he’s mad at himself and at Jesse, for making him go through – what he’s sure of – is another twisted windy road to crushing destroying pain. This time, he thinks with the knowledge of unfortunate experiences – this time, he will not survive it.

Cassidy wouldn’t have lived as long as he has, had he been a naïve optimist, though, so he dwells on the potential disastrous consequences, which he prefers to call realistic.

Jesse will leave, he realizes, clearly as ever. Jesse will leave him, like everyone has done before, or Jesse will make _him_ leave. Either way, there’s not too much time before Jesse realizes what a twat Cassidy is and has always been, and the simple fact that he’s not going to change.

If Jesse, indeed, goes through the same suffering he does, Jesse seems uncannily unbothered about it, whereas Cassidy feels like hyperventilating every time they touch. It angers him, Jesse’s indifference, his own painful awareness of each and every Jesse’s move, it gnaws at him at nights and during days. He’s _weak_ because of Jesse, _for_ Jesse, and he needs to put a stop to that.

Jesse will leave, says the voice in his head, awfully smug and bitter at the same time. Even his own demons are bloody contradictive.

 _Jesse will leave, and this time you won’t make it, after all,_ the voice says.

Cassidy, the poor old bastard that he is, doesn’t want him any less, though.

+

+

He knows who Tulip is the moment he sees her, or more importantly, he knows who she must have been. He watches her come to the church over and over again, whirling around Jesse like a bitch in heat. He observes her from the back pew and sympathizes. He knows a person who can’t let go of the past when he sees one.

About her, he also observes the same predicament he’s currently in.

He’s not the only one who’s _aching_.

He also feels their shared past like a heavy rainy cloud between them, air electrified the same way it is before s storm; intimacy that pretty much doesn’t leave any room for anyone else but the two of them.

Cassidy feels unwanted, redundant, when Tulip seems to be everything Jesse has ever wanted but denied himself for some idiotic, unselfish, godly reason. Her wrongs add up perfectly to all of Jesse’s rights, and they make a brilliant yin and yang, or whatever the hell the Asians call it.

There’s an ugly, uncanny desire to hurt them and he feeds off that potentially dangerous idea, that’ll most likely finish off everything he and Jesse have.

Good, he thinks, nodding to himself. _Good._ That’s the way it should be.

Jesse will leave him and whatever he does, that’s not going to change.

+

+

He fucks Tulip in the back of the car, the leather seats rubbing at his bare knees. He knows who she is, of course he knows. He knows who, exactly, she means when she mentions her ‘boyfriend,’ and he’s not stupid enough to not realize what she’s trying to do. What both of them keep forgetting is that he is _old_ , he’s older than two of them put together and then some, and he’s seen every trick in the book and more. It’s not easy to manipulate him, because he’s had about a hundred more years to excel at it, so it’s pretty ridiculous and outright insulting that Tulip believes he could be fooled by a sexy smile and a bottle of pharmacy pills.

He fucks her roughly, intently, angrily. Well, he thinks viciously, maybe both of us could get something out of it, then.

She keeps eerily, unnaturally still throughout this pathetic attempt at sex, and after, she puts her knickers and trousers back on and leaves without sparing him a single look. She thinks she’s got what she came for, and Cassidy happily lets her believe that.

He lights up a cigarette, watching the smoke dissipate into the night air. He starts blowing circles and stops himself, almost choking on the smoke.

Jesse is not here.

 _Jesse_ , he mouths silently and laughs when he wants to cry.

He’s gone and done it, fucked up big time, before it’s been too late and he’d fuck up then, when it’s a million times more painful. There’s no coming back from what he’s done, not this time.

Even Jesse can’t be that forgiving.

He chose to do this, thus taking a short route, avoiding the crappy long path of trying to settle again and then still ending up exactly where he is now, only worse by far. It’s a tragic circle that he’s destined to repeat forever, and he’d better start cutting it short for all the time he has left.

He thinks back to all the fun he’s had with Jesse while it lasted. And fun is fun, but it’s time to move on now, from this shithole of a town, from these redneck arse-minded people, from Jesse. It’s been long enough.

There’s no coming back from this.

There are salty tears in his eyes that he blinks back angrily.

 _This pain is not survivable_ , he thinks, but fucking look at him: still there, living and breathing like a bloody disgusting parasite, isn’t he? Over and over he survives and gets his shit together and moves on and on and on, until one day he won’t be able to anymore. One day he would open his eyes and decide that he’s had enough, and he’d walk out to a sunbathed road in the middle of fucking nowhere, and everything would just end.

He’s not there yet, but he starts to look forward to that ephemeral day.

+

+

In the foggy blue twilight of the small church Jesse’s face looks surreal and foreign, like he came straight out of Monet’s painting. There’s a faint sound of cicadas chirring in the tall yellow grass outside. Cassidy thinks he remembers being at the seaside once, a lifetime ago, and that moment reminds him perfectly of the nightly walks along the empty beach, cicadas chirring loudly indifferently, as if for an audience they didn’t need, warm air caressing his skin.

He listens to the cicadas while he still has a chance.

“You fucked Tulip,” Jesse repeats slowly and carefully, breaking the silence, apparently making sure he’s heard Cassidy right. “You fucked Tulip,” he says again, after Cassidy nods, too enthusiastically, and he sounds altogether disbelieving, shocked, and hurt. And while more often than not Jesse is pretty hard to predict, he’s not _that_ unpredictable, and, of course, he gets mad. He’s not yelling yet, but Cassidy can see it in the barely concealed anger, in the tightly closed fists, in the gnawing of his teeth.

There’s no coming back from this now, he reminds himself, it’s too late now. What’s done is done.

“You did _fucking what_ now, Cassidy?” He grits out, a lot more decibels added to his volume. There’s a throbbing vein at the side of his forehead. Cassidy wants to lick it, to feel the pulsing of blood on his tongue.

“My apologies, man,” he says as unapologetically as he can manage. Sharp needles of guilt prickle his chest. “She basically threw herself on me cock. Got me drugs as a foreplay, I s’pose, so we technically skipped straight to the second date, or whichever one it is when the lass puts out. I imagine must be some number consisting of two digits with you, padre, what with your uniform of choice…”

A strong punch to his face cuts him off mid-sentence. He flies back from the sheer force of it, falling on his arse and knocking around a few pews as he goes down. Jesse is on him in a moment, and the second punch follows right after. The pain spreads all over his face, sharp and unresisting, and Cassidy _revels_ in it.

This is what he was looking for, what he was craving so dearly. He doesn’t attempt to fight Jesse back as he yearns for his friend to hurt him, break him, _punish him_. This is what it always comes down to, what he always ends up with. If not for Jesse, he’d be making his way to the nearest BDSM place he could find, begging for anyone available to make him suffer, so, really, he’s just using his budget smartly. Jesse knows all the best means to hurt him, anyways.

“You motherfucking --” Jesse shouts, his arm drawing back, anticipating for the next punch. “Fucking Tulip – How could you – You fucking disgusting loser --”

Cassidy waits for the punch as he lies on the floor, pinned by Jesse’s weight, one of Jesse’s fist gripping his shirt, another flying down to meet his face.

“And she loved it,” Cassidy says viciously to wind him up even further. He licks his bloodied bottom lip, tasting metal. “Screamed and begged for more, man, seriously, apparently wanted to find the most _sinful_ of us all to fuck all the unrealized potential out of her.”

He’s hitting way below the belt, saying filthy rubbish like that, but instead of knocking Cassidy’s head on the floor – as he should – Jesse’s hands slow down.

“I don’t – I don’t understand!” He yells, frowning, sitting straighter, straddling Cassidy on the floor. Cassidy hopes Jesse won’t notice his raging hard on trough his very tight jeans. Proximity and heat will do that to a red-blooded healthy man, which he is not, but, really, same rules apply.

Jesse’s eyes stare somewhere at the spot above Cassidy’s shoulder. His face is oddly still.

“I don’t understand,” he repeats, so much quieter it’s a shock to Cassidy’s ears. He can’t keep up with what’s suddenly happening. “Why would you say that?”

He looks him in the eye finally, and Cassidy doesn’t understand the question at the slightest, his heartbeat too loud in his ears, his cock pulsing.

“What?” He says unintelligibly.

“Why would you say all that shit to me?” Jesse repeats slowly and forcefully, his expression thoughtful and confused. “I am obviously already fucking angry at you, I’m fucking _hitting_ _your face_ , so why would you feel the need to tell me how she fucking loved it, when I’m already smashing your face, Cassidy?”

For that, Cassidy doesn’t have an answer, or at least one that would make sense. He swallows nervously, trying to understand how this thing could possibly turn on him and spin so out of control this quickly. He keeps silent, gulping air like a bloody fish.

“I don’t speak _loser_ , Cassidy,” Jesse says sharply, giving Cassidy’s upper body a shake, where both of his hands fist his shirt now. “You’re gonna have to spell this one out for me.”

Okay, maybe Jesse _is_ that unpredictable, Cassidy thinks, panicked; he certainly couldn’t see this coming. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Jesse gives him another wild shake, which continues to make him marvel on Jesse’s incredible strength underneath all that holy apparel.

“Padre, I fucked your girlfriend up the arse and you wanna go into semantics?” He tries weakly, but Jesse smirks at him evilly. You wouldn’t believe it was a holy man holding him down at that moment, Jesse’s look truly devilish. “Maybe it wasn’t a _girlfriend_ that you needed after all…”

“Okay, let’s see if I get this right, then, you pathetic piece of shit,” Jesse hisses, squinting down at him, his voice sharp and cruel, ready to strike and destroy. “You fall on my head out of thin fucking air – homeless, no money, no nothing – and you find a perfect target: a failed preacher, wasted fucking space of a man, so why not dry him up, suck all of his energy, time, money, church wine, and pretty much everything you can get your filthy hands on? And why – just in case that’s not enough – not fuck the love of his life as well, just to make sure there’s really nothing left to take?”

Cassidy listens, his chest contracting painfully, and he thinks distractedly that this is why he had to get out of there earlier, this is why he doesn’t do friendship, and love, and relationships in general.

This pain is not survivable.

He shuts his eyes, preparing for another punch to drive Jesse’s point home, but it never comes. He looks up at Jesse and something must have shown on his face, because Jesse stares at him for what feels like a lifetime, then takes a deep breath and continues in a completely different tone:

“Or,” he says and pauses, chewing his lip briefly, “You fall down on my head out of thin fucking air, tired and more than a little desperate, and I’m the only one who’s kind to you, so you grow to like me and trust me, which scares the shit out of you, so before you could give me a chance you go and fuck things up thus leaving me no choice to hate you and be done with you. Which in turn gives you more reason to despise yourself. Am I getting warmer, Cass?”

He shudders, his lips shaking, his throat closing up. There’s no way in hell Cassidy is going to break down right now, in the near darkness of the church, with a boner caused by Jesse’s body on his, tearing up because how close to home Jesse’s words hit, how ridiculously vulnerable he is, torn open before Jesse, surrendering with both mind and body.

There’s long tense silence. Cassidy tries to hear any cicadas outside, but it’s dead quiet and the only sound he hears is his own ragged uneven breathing. It’s got dark while Cassidy’s been playing the role of a punch bag, and now he can only see Jesse’s face thanks to his vampire vision. Jesse’s expression is pained. Cassidy wants to wipe it off his handsome face.

The silence drags on and on, Cassidy’s heart beating faster with every minute during which not a single word is spoken.

“Tulip is not the love of my life,” Jesse says suddenly, casually as if they were two Englishmen talking about the bloody weather south of Leicester. “She’s not the part of the equation I got upset about.”

Cassidy doesn’t know what to say to that, except apparently his mouth does, as it opens without his permission.

“Oh yeah? Was there a third variable, then?” He tries for Jesse’s amount of casualty and he manages his voice to sound steady enough. The air around them is electrified with fear and anticipation, and, clear as ever, Cassidy realizes something huge is about to happen.

Jesse doesn’t answer. Instead he leans down, closing the space between them, and kisses Cassidy full on the mouth.

It’s nothing like that first time in the church that seems ages ago now. This time it’s messy and wet and hard, and Cassidy _melts_ into it, a weak moan escaping him. Jesse bites at his bottom lip, almost hard enough to draw blood – again – his fingers tight on both sides of Cassidy’s face, and he understands now – this is how Jesse is going to punish him.

They kiss, a hot messy battle of tongues and teeth, Cassidy getting hotter and more desperate by the second. His cock is painfully hard against the inside of his underwear, wet where it’s leaked pre-come. He tries to move and put his hands around Jesse, but they are pinned down in Jesse’s death grip, and he can do nothing to satisfy the craving to feel Jesse’s hot skin against his fingers. He writhes instead, trying to rub his pulsing cock on Jesse’s thigh to get at least some modicum of relief as Jesse dominates his mouth with his tongue.

Cassidy wants him _impossibly._

“Cass,” Jesse mutters into his mouth, his tongue running along the inside of Cassidy’s teeth, probably making sure he doesn’t really have fangs. Cassidy can sympathize with that. Cassidy is held down, though, and Jesse’s surprisingly stronger than he is – at least like that, he’s yet to try Jesse in a fight where Cassidy would actually fight back – so he writhes and squirms and tries to wrap his skinny legs around Jesse’s waist.

He’s so hot he feels like he’s burning, like his blood is boiling inside his veins. He wants, and aches, and needs like never before, the urge to touch Jesse, to have him all to himself almost too overwhelming.

Then Jesse breaks the kiss apart for a moment, panting, and Cassidy uses that pause to slip from under him, turn around, unzip his pants and get on all fours in front of Jesse, arse in the air and ready for anything Jesse can possibly wish to do to him. He needs to be hurt now, to be broken and fractured, _to be used_ , and Jesse’s the most right and wrong person to do this.

He expects Jesse to tear down his boxers, spit in his hand and fuck Cassidy raw, hard and painful, until he tears him apart from the very inside, until he’s bleeding and hurting all over, and finally feeling that he’s got exactly what he deserves. He’s impatient now, so he lowers his forehead on his crossed arms, arse in the air for Jesse’s taking, and he waits, but nothing happens.

Annoyed and almost trembling with desire, he turns to look at Jesse over his shoulder.

He is not sure what he expected, but Jesse’s half sitting, half leaning on the pew, frozen, frowning at Cassidy with a confused expression.

“Come on, Padre, don’t keep a lad hangin’, yeah?” Cassidy urges him, giving his arse a shake for a good measure. Jesse shakes his head.

“What the hell is this, Cass?” Jesse says, gesturing at the whole of him. Cassidy thinks it should be bloody fucking obvious, what _this_ was. He grits his teeth, impatient to get to the rough fucking part, wishing for Jesse to get the fuck up to speed. “What do you expect me to do?”

Is Jesse an idiot, Cassidy thinks incredibly, is that what this is? Does Jesse not know what to do with another lad’s arse, staring him in the fucking face and inviting him to bloody camp? He shuts his eyes tightly.

“To get the tea set and pour us both a lovely cuppa, what the _fuck_ do you think?!” Cassidy bellows, getting up on his elbows. His entire body hurts with the need, his cock still weeping. Jesse stares at him. “I expect you to fuck me, Padre, that’s what this position I’m in usually means, or did you think I was busy looking for cracks in the pew?”

Jesse’s eyebrow draw together, mouth opening. “I’m not gonna fuck you now, Cassidy, not like this!” he points to all of him vaguely. “Why the fuck did you think I would?”

Cassidy doesn’t answer, too busy trying to not break apart and fucking cry of disappointment.

Jesse moves away from him, and starts to get up. Cassidy swings around and catches a hold of his short desperately.

“Please, don’t,” he begs, hating himself, vulnerable and pathetic in front of Jesse.

Jesse sighs heavily, looking sadly down at him.

“Did you expect me to fuck you up, Cass?” He asks quietly, looking at Cassidy with an emotion he can’t name. “Did you expect me to punish you and hurt you? Is that why you screwed Tulip, to make me want to hurt you?”

Cassidy says nothing, his fingers hurting where he clenches them tightly at Jesse’s shirt. His heart beats violently in his chest, in his ears.

“Well, I’m not gonna do that, Cass,” Jesse is saying, “I think you’ve forgotten that people don’t hurt the ones they care about.”

“It’s exactly those that they hurt the most, and, no, I haven’t forgotten,” Cassidy says, his voice a tiny shaky thing. He thinks he might pass out from the sheer amount of emotion he’s feeling, but he’s not sure his vampire body can do that.

Jesse looks at him silently, with pity in his eyes, and Cassidy starts getting angry now, but before he can go into full-on rage, Jesse stretches out his hand.

“Come on, Cass,” he says, his hand hanging in front of him, waiting. Unsure, Cassidy takes it, and Jesse pulls him to his feet.

“Come on,” Jesse says again, turning around and walking to the reception area. Silently, Cassidy follows him on unsteady legs.

Jesse walks into the main reception area and stops, looking around, searching for something. He finally sees a small bowl of forgotten useless shit on of the cupboards, filled with pieces of metal, coins, and tiny old keys. Jesse examines all of it for a moment, before fishing out a rusty small key. He holds it up, triumphantly, before walking back to the hall – Cassidy following him closely – and stops underneath the stairs that lead to the church attic. For the first time, Cassidy notices there’s a small door that must have been there all this time, almost unnoticeable under a thick layer of dust and dirt.

“My… another preacher used to live here,” Jesse mutters, fumbling with the small key. The door gives a creak and opens. “And then I slept here for some time, as well.”

Jesse steps inside, turning on the weak fading light and closing the door behind him, as Cassidy follows right after. They’re standing in a tiny room with a double-sized bed barely fitting inside the four walls. Beside the bed is a tiny nightstand, and together they make up all the furniture in the room. The bed is neatly made, but the nightstand is covered with a layer of dust, illuminated by a feeble light coming from a small light bulb hanging on a wire from the ceiling.

“What are you--” Cassidy starts to say, but he is suddenly pushed against the tiny door, Jesse’s hands all over him, Jesse’s tongue opening his mouth. Cassidy moans, his cock, which has already lost most of its interest, springs to life enthusiastically again. Jesse ravages his mouth, one of his hands pinning both of Cassidy’s to the wall above his head, the other one sneaking underneath his shirt to run across his chest, grazing a nipple. Cassidy grunts into Jesse’s mouth, arousal sudden and empowering, warmness gathering in his lower belly.

Jesse breaks the kiss to take a breath, and Cassidy pants as if he’s just run a marathon. He can’t understand what’s happening as Jesse’s clearly let him know he wasn’t going to have sex with him. He doesn’t want to say anything though, afraid he’s going to spook Jesse somehow, change his mind now, or give him a reason to stop. He doesn’t want to stop, not now, when he’s got a real taste of Jesse in his mouth that’s going to take ages to fade out.

Cassidy has always been an addict.

Jesse kisses him again, messily but without teeth, almost carefully. His hand that’s not holding both of Cassidy’s wrists, comes up to lift his chin and he mouths and kisses Cassidy’s neck, his ear, tongues at the lobe, before making his way to Cassidy’s collarbones, leaving a wet trail of saliva behind. Cassidy hears a pitiful noise and only then realizes it’s come out of him, but he’s got no spare energy to feel ashamed about that.

Jesse takes a step back him, and Cassidy holds back a whine at the loss.

“You’ve forgotten how it should really be done, Cass,” Jesse says softly, warmly, looking at him with those eyes again that make Cassidy want to both laugh and cry. He has no idea what he’s supposed to do or say at that moment, but Jesse turns him around and walks him to the bed, pushing him down on it, and Cassidy’s only too happy to make him do whatever he wants.

Jesse crawls on it after him, hovering above Cassidy with his arms and knees on each side of the vampire, looking down at him as if Cassidy is something to be admired and loved. He swallows at cotton lodged in his throat, refusing to meet Jesse’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to do. His hand scratches frantically at his chest, but Jesse catches it in his own and draws it back.

“I’m gonna show you, Cass, alright?” Jesse says softly, quietly, and for the lack of anything better to say, Cassidy nods, a lump forming in his throat, while, at the same time his cock is as hard as a rock.

Jesse leans down and starts covering his neck in hot wet kisses, going from Cassidy’s ears to his collarbones, then drawing back, reaches for the vampire’s shirt and takes it of. Obstacle out the way, Jesse leans down again, his mouth circling Cassidy’s pale pink nipple, sucking at it until it’s hard and then moving to the other one. Cassidy pants and moans and has no idea what to do with his hands, feeling raw and opened up, and _alive_. Jesse’s touches are careful and tender, like Cassidy can break if pushed too hard, which they both know is not true. But Jesse’s hands still ghost over him like he’s an expensive china cup to be treated with utmost love and care, and Cassidy’s breath goes out. He hasn’t a clue how to behave as he usually has completely different sexual experiences.

He has, indeed, forgotten that once, several lifetimes ago, or maybe, in the long forgotten dreams in the back of his cocaine-blown mind, when sex wasn’t called sex yet, people _made love_ to each other. Sex didn’t have to be angry or painful or used to gain something, and it certainly didn’t intend to punish, it intended to express care and love and affection.

That’s what Jesse’s doing to him now, expressing his affection via soft caressing touches and wet sucking kisses along his chest. Cassidy has no idea how to react to that and how to behave, because that feels wrong a ndunnatural that Jesse treats him this way, when he should’ve be long done with Cassidy by now. He wants to be hurt, needs to be broken, and that’s what he came here for in the first place, but Jesse’s refusing to cooperate, instead acting like… well, _this_.

Jesse’s mouth swipes at his bellybutton and then stops to mouth at each of the scars on his belly, long and short. Cassidy is so out of it, he can only moan brokenly and flail his hands around, not sure where to put them. Distantly, he feels Jesse take his off Cassidy’s pants, along with his underwear, finally, and then Jesse’s tongue swipes a long hit stride along his cock.

“Fuck,” Cassidy swears, painfully alert now, as he cannot pinpoint the last time anybody did that to him out of their own free will. It feels absolutely different somehow, and he distractedly wonders if Jesse is the heart of the change of perception. Cassidy has always been the one to suck cocks, sometimes for drugs and sometimes for favors, and almost always with Tom, so he is not prepared for this, here and now.

Jesse licks up and down the shaft a few times before opening his mouth and swallowing him, wet heat around Cassidy’s cock. He hisses, writhing, as Jesse’s hands hold down his hips. He arches up, shaking, his hips twisting and thrusting, his hands sliding into Jesse’s messy gorgeous hair and holding on. He’s making a high-pitched keening sound he’s going to be terribly embarrassed about later, his breath wheezing in and out between clenched teeth.

“Jesse,” he whimpers, the name sounding almost unfamiliar on his tongue, after the long string of nicknames and endearments. Jesse looks up at him, surprised, his mouth stretched around Cassidy’s dick and that’s about the hottest scene his old eyes have ever laid upon. Jesse sucks diligently, and the warmth in his belly turns into a pressure and then turns into searing need to come, but he holds back, unwilling for all of that to end as soon as he’s done, so he does his best to hold on. He bucks his hips forward, sliding deeper, and Jesse just takes it, not once taking his mouth off him.

He can feel tears of restrain at the corners of his eyes as Jesse tongues at the head, licking at the slit, while his fingers caress Cassidy’s balls, incredibly hot wet sound of skin on skin. He’s never been the strongest kind, so when Jesse whispers, his lips shining with slick wetness and red and swollen, looking him straight in the eye, “Come on, now, Cass, come for me,” he comes like a freight train, arching up harder, the force of it making him almost pass out.

Jesse keeps milking his dick, though, his hands butterfly-light on his skin. Cassidy moans and whimpers, too sensitive and way too overwhelmed by what, by far, was the most intense blowjob in his life. He opens his eyes to look at Jesse, who is still fully clothed, while Cassidy is laying under him completely naked, exhausted and with come pooling at the base of his cock. Jesse has a noticeable tent of jeans in his crotch area, and Cassidy realizes Jesse hasn’t had time to even touch himself while he was taking care of him.

He starts to get up, willing to help Jesse out, do anything – _anything, really_ – Jesse might want him to do, but he’s stopped by a firm hand on his chest, pushing him back down.

“Shh, Cass, just relax, ok?” Jesse says, smiling that little intimate smile he reserves for Cassidy only. “Let me take care of you.”

As if by magic, his spent cock gives a violent twitch at those words. Seemingly from a kink he didn’t even realize he had, the phrase ‘take care’ in relation to him makes him hot with arousal, even though he’s come not even five minutes ago.

Jesse, focused intensely on Cassidy as he is, notices, of course. His smile turns into a grin.

“You like that, don’t you?” He smirks, and his hand runs smoothly from Cassidy’s way too sensitive nipples to his twitching cock. “ _I’m going to take good care of you, Cassidy_.”

“Fuck, Jesse, please,” Cassidy moans, and God, his voice is wrecked, scratchy and broken. He isn’t sure what he’s asking for, really, but he’s sure Jesse could give whatever it is to him, anyway.

Jesse moves away and stands up, quickly getting his clothes off. His hands are lightning-fast, apparently as eager to continue as Cassidy is, waiting for him on the bed, sporting a growing hard on. Jesse’s clothes fall into a careless heap on the floor as he shakes them off, and Cassidy spots scarred tanned skin of his bare chest, as he climbs back on the bed, straddling him. Cassidy shudders wretchedly.

“You are worth way more than a quick rough fuck against the wall, Cass,” Jesse is saying, his hands flying up and down Cassidy’s skinny ribs. He feels dizzy – from the fact he’s just come and still getting hard again, from Jesse’s hands on him, Jesse’s lips, from just _Jesse._ He throws his head back on the old dusty pillows and wonders how, exactly, he has got that point in his life. He thinks back to a few years ago and he remembers the never-ending paranoia and sorrow and loneliness, deep down, always gnawing at him from the inside, slowly eating him away bit by bit as he’s sitting on the coach in a filthy shithole of a flat he used to stay at, with cockroaches running all over him, and he, too stoned on meth to even wave them away. He remembers the sheer hopelessness when he’s turning on an old senile telly that had nothing but one black and white comic channel intended to be funny and instead causing more apathy. He remembers a dying plant on his windowsill and his desperate attempts to bring it back to life, to bring anything there back to life, to feel at least a little alive himself.

He blinks the vivid memory away as Jesse’s teeth graze at his nipples carefully, not painfully, just a right amount to make it pleasant. Cassidy is sporting a raging hard on, now, what feels like seconds after he’s come, and the entire thing is so overwhelming he wants to scream and cry and laugh. He doesn’t need it, doesn’t want to be doing it, especially like this, with Jesse’s careful hands and warm smile, and it feels dreadfully wrong, except it also feels right, and he does, he _does need this_ , he’s never needed anything more.

He’s never learnt to deal with contradictions, after all.

“Jesse,” he breathes out desperately, brokenly, blinking back the tears at the corners of his eyes furiously.

“Look at you,” Jesse says, his eyes almost black in the dim light of the room. “You’ve no idea what you’re doing to me, Cass, do you know that?” He sighs wearily, shakes his head. “I’m trying so hard to be one person, and you appear and turn me into a completely different one.”

Cassidy doesn’t see a problem in that, as Jesse is the best person he can be, Cassidy’s _favorite_ fucking person in the world. He wouldn’t change a think about Jesse, and he barely catches these words before they come out of his uncontrollable mouth.

“You’re gonna totally fuckin’ kill me.”

Jesse doesn’t sound resigned or sad about it, though – merely stating a fact that he’s fine with, that he’s more than fine with. Cassidy could totally get behind that.

Jesse’s fingers wrap around his half-hard cock, and Cassidy doesn’t need much to get fully hard again. Jesse kisses him, passionate and hot, tongue pushy and demanding, as if feeding of Cassidy’s neediness. His other hand reaches in the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed and pulls out something resembling a bottle of lube.

“You said a preacher used to live here,” Cassidy says, trying desperately to will his voice back to normal. “What kind of preacher was he, then? I reckon this town can’t tell a _bad preacher_ if one fucks it up the arse.”

Jesse smirks, “Yeah, but I also said _I_ used to live here,” he says vaguely. Now, Cassidy didn’t need the images of Jesse practicing anal sex with someone that’s not Cassidy. He wills the sudden flash of anger and jealousy down.

He reaches down and grabs Jesse’s cock, finally able to do something with his hands, and Jesse hisses, his eyes shutting. It feels silky and heavy in his hand, and so, so damn good. It’s been long, too long since he’d had anyone’s cock in his hand other than his own. Jesse kisses him again, quick and wet, and then opens the small bottle, getting lube on his fingers.

“I don’t need –“ Cassidy says frantically, shaking his head, “I don’t need that – You can just do it, you know, I’m used to pain, so –”

“No,” Jesse says firmly, frowning again. “I told you I’m not gonna fuckin’ hurt you, Cass, no matter how much you think you deserve it.”

He pushes out some more lube, until it coats his fingers completely.

“I told you, you are worth more than that.”

Cassidy gasps, his cock pulsing at the words. He must have some kind of kink for this talking down at him thing judging by how much what Jesse’s saying turns him on. He grinds his cock against Jesse’s naked thigh, smearing pre-come there, and god, if that isn’t bloody filthy and _hot_.

The friction feels amazing, and he whimpers, arching and rubbing his whole body on Jesse. He feels Jesse’s heartbeat with his bare chest. Jesse’s slick finger presses against his hole. He gasps, the air leaving his lungs at once.

“Tell me what you want, Cass,” Jesse says, his finger circling at the puckered skin. He has a hungry expression on his face, panting heavily, like a predator finally cornering his prey after a long chase. Cassidy jerks his hips up at that look, rutting against Jesse’s warm body. He’s aching with the need for something, more, more touch, more lips, more Jesse.

“I want,” Cassidy tries to say, swallowing the excess saliva in his mouth, “I want you, Jesse, please, come on, mate,”

“What do you want?” Jesse repeats urgently, his eyes never leaving Cassidy’s.

“I want you to fuck me, yeah?” Cassidy begs desperately, shame forgotten as he arches up to press his body to Jesse’s skin, moaning at the feels of Jesse’s heart thudding against his chest. “Please, Jesse, please, just do anything you want, love, alright? I don’t care!”

And he means _anything_ , really – fuck him until he bleeds, use his mouth like a back-alley whore, hit him until he can’t move. It’s a dangerous kind of power Jesse holds over him, and that simple realization scares the fuck out of him.

He feels like he’s about to cry, his voice shaking pathetically. This is what Jesse has reduced him to – a trembling begging mess where a bad-arse 119-year-old vampire should be. In his soul, if he still has one, they’ve poked a million holes in the all the decades he’s been around, and Jesse’s found and prodded at each and every one unknowingly.

“ _I_ care,” Jesse says firmly, frowning deeply, thick wrinkle between his eyebrows. Cassidy’s cock digs in his thigh, as his hands work up and down Jesse’s erection. “I care about you, and it pisses me off that you went through all this trouble of fucking Tulip, because you didn’t wanna give me a chance.”

 _It was no trouble_ , he wants to say viciously, shaking with the unfairness of it, because Jesse _has no fucking idea._ He’s barely 35 and he hasn’t lived through a modicum of shite Cassidy has in his exhausting long life. Jesse wouldn’t be saying such ridiculous things if he’d thought about it from Cassidy’s perspective. He tells him as much.

“So what, you’ve decided to quit trying anymore?” Jesse says in response. “Quit on mankind and go drown yourself in drugs, whores and alcohol?”

“I didn’t quit on you, did I?” Cassidy bites out, not wishing this conversation to continue. He’s too vulnerable right now as it is, without adding the story of all his hurts and aches to the equation. He doesn’t have to prove anything to Jesse.

“Yes, you did, Cass, that’s exactly what you did,” says Jesse, shaking his head. “You’re my only friend, you do realize that, right?”

And no, Cassidy didn’t realize, because he’s been too busy brooding and worrying about his own obsession with the preacher. The words cause a rush of blood to his dick, though, that spoken out loud admission that Jesse needs him too, maybe not as much as Cassidy needs him, but still does all the same. Misery loves company, indeed, does it not?

He’s tensed, trembling all over, and Jesse mutters “Relax,” as he tries to push his finger inside. He’s too wound up though, so Jesse kisses him, kindly, tenderly, and Cassidy goes soft and pliant almost instantaneously under him. Jesse was right – he has, indeed, forgotten how it could be between too people, as he’s spent the majority of his life among even worse fucked-up cunts than himself. The way Jesse’s treating him now, he hasn’t been treated in so long, he’s forgotten it doesn’t have to be cruel and hurtful. He arches up and forward, pushing himself on Jesse’s finger as Jesse lets out a broken sigh. He keeps kissing Cassidy, slowly and carefully fucking his finger in and out of him, before adding the second one and then the third. He keeps moving them, until Cassidy is shaking and whimpering in his mouth, tears running down the sides of his face.

“Please, Jesse, please, please,” he begs brokenly like a mantra, absolutely out of it now, raw and completely at Jesse’s mercy. He hasn’t ever felt like this, at least he thinks he hasn’t. He’s always been very conscious of who and what he lets under his skin, until Jesse Custer came along, destroying all of Cassidy’s inhibitions in a heartbeat. He whines as Jesse scissors his fingers inside him, trembling in every limb to the tips of his fingers. “Please, love, please, I need – I want – please, Jesse, Jesse, please, love, please –“

“Alright, Cass, Jesus,” Jesse breathes out, flush spreading down his neck. He looks wrecked.

He pulls his fingers out, making Cassidy keen with the loss, but before he can do anything more, there’s the hardness of Jesse’s cock pressing where his fingers have just been.

“I’m clean, I swear,” Cassidy blabbers, feeling it necessary to inform Jesse, “I can’t get sick, what with being a vampire, you know, so you needn’t be worried –”

“I wasn’t,” Jesse tells him, blinking fast, as if actually just now remembering the disadvantages of bareback gay sex. He shakes his head a bit, and then slowly pushes into Cassidy until he won’t go any further, and Cassidy cries out with the long-forgotten feeling of it, this fullness inside, this connection with another lad. He squeezes his eyes shut, his whole body vibrating and twisting, as Jesse moves carefully in and out, cock disappearing inside Cassidy’s body.

“Alright?” Jesse asks him in a broken shaky voice. Cassidy opens his mouth to reply, but only unintelligible sounds come out, and he just nods instead. He spreads his legs wider, offering himself, eager for Jesse to get even closer, even deeper inside him, feeling ecstatic as Jesse leans down and kisses him deeply. Then Jesse’s cock hits his prostate and everything whites out a bit, and he thinks he wails with the sheer ecstasy of it. It’s too much – the sensory stimulation, the intensity, the emotions – it overwhelms him finally, pushing far over his limits. He thinks he’s sobbing now, body shaking violently, as Jesse keeps thrusting in and out, faster and harder, but still ever so careful not to hurt him, to make it as good for him as he can, as if what’s going on still isn’t good enough.

“Cass, Cass, Cass,” Jesse is saying frantically, desperately, pushing in and out. He stops suddenly, Cassidy going wild with panic, before Jesse scoops him in his arms, and turns them, sitting with his back against the frame of the bed, and Cassidy on his lap. He grabs his hips, lifting Cassidy up and down on his cock, thrusting up when Cassidy comes down, and with the angle changed, his prostate is hit every single thrust. He feels far more exposed in this position, so he wraps his arms around Jesse’s neck and pushes his wet face into Jesse’s shoulder, hiding his shame where no one can see. His legs tremble with the force of his ecstasy, but before they completely give out, Jesse gathers his hips and does the work himself, lifting him up and down over and over.

“Jesse,” he wails, his voice muffled against Jesse shoulder, as Jesse keeps penetrating his body and what feels like – his very soul. “Jesse, please, _please,_ ”

It’s an unintelligent string of babbled out words and pleading for god knows what, but Jesse’s hands run up and down his spine, and he whispers “Cass, it’s alright, Cass, _Cass,_ ” into his ear.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he whispers, and Cassidy moans brokenly.

“I’m always gonna be there for you,” Jesse says.

“I’m not gonna leave you, Cass,” He breathes out, thrusting harder for emphasis. Cassidy whines, gripping his shoulders tighter.

“ _I love you, Cass_ ,” Jesse says, and even though Cassidy knows he’s just saying that for the effect it would – and does – have on him, his entire body convulses and he comes and comes and comes. He sobs into Jesse’s collarbone, tears running down his cheeks, as Jesse fucks him right through his orgasm, a never-ending string of ‘Cass, Cass, Cass’ in his ear. He feels like passing out, like he’s been hit by a train, like he’s fallen down from an airplane. His body aches all over, but he’s still riding the waves of his orgasm, too blissed out to notice, to fucked out to think about anything at all. Distantly, he feels something hot inside him and he realizes Jesse must have come, but he’s too exhausted to move even an inch.

Jesse’s arms close around him tighter, bringing him closer, as Cassidy sobs, shaking, overwhelmed and a broken mess. He’s got what he wanted in the end, hasn’t he? Different means, same result. Jesse did manage to break him and hurt him even without meaning to, but it doesn’t bring him the solace, the closure he was hoping for.

“I meant it, Cass,” Jesse says suddenly, quietly and carefully. “I meant everything I said.”

“Shut up, Jesse, _just shut up,_ will ya?” Cassidy begs, his voice shattered and wretched. He wants Jesse to stop it, now that it’s all over, and he has no reason to pull Cassidy’s strings anymore. He wants to suffer in silence and then gather his shit and leave and never lay eyes on Jesse’s face again, lest he’ll see his eternal shame.

But Jesse’s not done, oh no.

“I love you, Cass,” Jesse says like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Cassidy groans.

“No, you fucking don’t,” he grits out, finally ungluing his face from Jesse’s shoulder. “That’s the endorphins talking, Padre, and the fact that your cock’s still up me arsehole.”

Jesse sighs heavily like Cassidy is being exceptionally thick. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I could love you?”

“Because you don’t know fuckall about me, mate, and what you do know should’ve bloody made you throw up by now, so you must have some weird vampire-murderer fetish for all the lack of throwing up you’ve demonstrated. Either way, I’ve been there, done that, so thanks but no, thanks.”

Jesse is looking at him silently, his expression saying ‘I ain’t buying you bullshit,’ and ‘do try harder.’

“I’m sure you feel all nice and cuddly right now, Padre,” Cassidy says to fill the silence that’s too uncomfortable for him. He is very conscious of their position – him sitting on Jesse’s lap with a cock still deep in his arse. How bloody awkward. “And sure you feel like you’re in love with me and the entire world right now, but it ain’t gonna be so warm and flowery fer me when the high of a fuck wears off, and you realize you're a holy man and yet you’re sticking your cock in a bloody abomination.”

“You’re not an abomination, Cass,” Jesse says, almost desperately, and Cassidy thinks he wants to convince himself more than anyone else. He looks away, but Jesse grabs his chin and makes him look up. “You’re not an abomination, and I’m not a holy man. None of us is perfect, but that’s what makes it all the more fun. I thought you didn’t like boring.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t --“

But Jesse cuts him off with a kiss, effectively shutting him up. When it ends, he says, confident and firm: “You’re my friend, Cass, and I’m also in love with you. I want you to stay with me.”

And there are a million and one reasons Cassidy can come up with for why he has to leave, as soon as he can, but there’s a tiny, barely audible voice in his head that tells him to give it a try. And even though he knows, in painful details, how this is going to end, he’s never been strong, and he’s never been able to refuse anything to Jesse, so, fool that he is, he closes his eyes and nods. He hates himself for it and he’s proud of himself at the same time, and isn’t that a bloody contradiction?

Cassidy, in his long and adventurous life, has never learnt what to do with those.

Well, he thinks, hopeful in an uncertain and childish way, Jesse is full of them – sodding paradoxes and contradictions.

Cassidy’s got a lifetime to learn.


End file.
